Résultats du premier tour des élections présidentielles de 2012

By No author 24/04/2012

Contrary to the predictions of the opinion polls, the results for the first round of the French Presidential Elections were actually much closer than had been expected.

François Hollande (Socialist Party) achieved 28.63%, with Nicolas Sarkozy scoring 27.18% (UMP). The big surprise of the night came from Marine Le Pen (National Front) who drew nearly 18% of the votes. Jean-Luc Mélanchon (Communist Party) had hoped in vain to do better than her but this was not the case, with the fiery left-winger attracting only 11% of the votes. Even so, this was by some way the best result achieved by the Communist Party in French elections for many years.

François Bayrou (Modem) was the big loser with only 9%. In 2007, with nearly 19% of the votes, he managed to come third in the Presidential Race. This time, he trails behind the National Front and the Communist Party.

The French electorate is clearly sending a strong message to its political classes. Also worthy of note is the nearly 80% turn-out of the electorate.

Results 1st round of the French Presidential Elections

Candidates

Results 1st Round of French Presidential Elections 2012 (%)

Results 1st Round of French Presidential Elections 2012 (%)

French Living Abroad

François Hollande

28.63

28.31

Nicolas Sarkozy

27.18

38.00

Marine Le Pen

17.90

5.95

Jean-Luc Mélenchon

11.11

8.31

François Bayrou

9.13

11.37

Eva Joly

2.31

5.44

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan

1.79

1.28

Philippe Poutou

1.15

0.70

Nathalie Arthaud

0.56

0.28

Jacques Cheminade

0.25

0.36

Registered voters

46.04 Millions

Voters

36.59 Millions (79.47%)

Registered Voters

1.04 millions

Voters

39.08%

What happened in London?

With 30% more registered voters than in 2007, and despite the additional polling stations spread accross the UK, the queuing at the French Lycée in South Kensington in London was still impossible. In some cases, people had to queue for over two hours (still better than in 2007 when the queue was over 4 hours long). Contrary to 2007, the queue was already an hour long at 9am , probably because people remembered how bad it was later in the day 5 years ago.

So bad were the queues that many people actually left without voting .Others claimed that they were told that their name was not on the list when they had in fact received voting papers through the post.

The whole process was highly criticised by people who had queued for hours.

When asked what the main reason was, people believed that the slow process was mainly due to the fact that not enough people were in place to check if names were on the list .

Partly as a consequence of these apparent organisational difficulties only one in five people registered to vote in London actually did so.

The French gathered in various places around London to watch the results unfold at 8pm. As many as 500 people regrouped at the French Institute, 300 at the Sofitel St James and many more at the Troquet on the King’s Road.